The giving tree

I am a giving tree
without branches.

I dive my root hands through crumbling
soil, each thread a throat, to scream
underground at the tip of every finger.

Listen, listen,
I am the giving tree without branches.

I dab the faces of the dead with my tears, indestructible
syllables that wriggle upwards through ground to
breathe a heavy silent dew over
anniversary flowers. I look on children, patterned with
greasy, hungry fingers, looking for adventure I
cannot provide. I look square in the eye every
magpie that cannot rest in me. I breathe without
trace over lovers looking for a shade darker than forever and
sigh my apologies.

Listen, listen,
I am the giving tree without branches.

And when I saw, in melted orange, the perfection of all I had held
inside, rolled onto the horizon, I felt a sensation
supernova sweep through me. Below the ground seeped a
low moan, a chorus of fingers singing
home. Agape and needing I watched the slide, the glorious
melt,
of all that meant colour salivate into a deep black shelf.
And hide. And die. And dissipate. The suction of life from the
world, as yellows met black as purples met black as cream torture met
black, sending its last exhale to me in the form of a bluebird. The
earth's
last pigment. She whispered to me;

It's yours, just reach out and touch it!

And I watched the last bluebird fly. Clutched into a
black pit death,
starless,
to cry;

Listen, listen.
I am the giving tree,
but I have no branches.